It was the dry season in Hollywood, so to speak—no pilots being made, the big productions all already cast. I was still what you might call a struggling actor, but I've booked enough commercial roles and bit parts in the past month that I didn't feel the need to hustle for nothing parts when nothing was even available. So I took advantage of a Groupon deal and found myself in a sunny resort on the California beach, San Quinby.
Unfortunately, you get what you pay for. The beaches were crowded, so I made do—lying by the pool, working on my tan, and enjoying the fresh air, the clear skies, and the warm sun.
I was half-asleep when a shadow fell across my face, waking me. I sat up, certain someone was trying to attract my attention, and was so befuddled I felt a momentary spring of panic at being unclothed. I was wearing, at the moment, a loose pair of swim trunks and some tanning oil. They were baggy on me; it'd be a few years since I'd gone swimming (where does the time go?) and I'd lost some weight since then.
Still, they were enough to preserve my modesty, which I realized as I took off my sunglasses and saw who was providing the shade.
"Oh my God... Camila? Camila Mendes?"
"Harry Cranz!" she replied happily, taking off her own shades.
Camila looked great. The last time I'd seen her had been a year ago. We'd been doing a chemistry read together, me for one of those parts that came so close you could taste it. We'd hit it off, and both expressed surprise that the producers decided to go another way for the young lovers in their project. In fact, we got along so well that we set a date to get drinks later that week. However, Camila had managed to score another role. She'd begged off, asking for a rain check, which I graciously gave, and the whole thing just never rematerialized. I hadn't pursued it, not wanting to seem desperate.
Seeing Camila in a bikini, I was not at all sure of my decision making. She was twisting on her heels, showing herself off a little—her dark one-piece swimsuit went well with her black hair. It was also low-cut on her chest and angled high on her buttocks, showing off the roundness of her curves to almost the dead center of her back. The front of the suit filled out rather nicely as well.
But more than her body, Camila had a poise and exotic sultriness that gave her cheerfulness a dark sheen. I recalled that in the roles we'd read for, she'd been some sort of cute goth girl, and even without a pro make-up team for the audition, she'll pulled the role off very well. Idiots, those Hollywood types. Total idiots.
"What are you doing here?" I asked her. "I had it on very good authority that this place was a dive."
"Oh, I'm slumming. The show—" (Like most Hollywood actresses, Camila assumed everyone she met had intimate knowledge of just what her projects were and how they were doing. She was right, in this case, but still—it stung a bit.) "Is doing some dumb arc all about the boys and I'm fucking kidnapped or whatever. Plus, we're on hiatus, so I can either do a bunch of bullshit photo ops or take a break."
She perched herself on the lowest part of my lounge chair. I'd drawn up my legs when I sat up to greet her, unintentionally making room for her. I can't say I minded sharing a seat with her, though I could think of better seating arrangements nonetheless.
"Still, I find it hard to believe this is the best you can afford," I said, indicating the rather pallid poolside. It wasn't exactly tacky, but if anyone looked like she belonged in an Olympic sized swimming pool with ivory tiles and water clearer than a dove's tears...
She shrugged haplessly. The tightly clinging swimsuit made it a very interesting motion—she'd been in the water recently. Hated to have missed that... "Waste not, want not. A vacay's a vacay. Besides, it's not like the CW pays us ER money, OK?"
"A-OK," I replied. "So how've you been?"
She reached out to punch my shoulder. "Wondering why you never called, numbnuts."
"I sent a text," I said defensively.
"One text? Three or four at least, to let me know you're serious. Don't you know anything about dating?"
"Well, I know a little about stalking, and—"
I broke off. Before I moved to L.A., I'd worked as a lifeguard—yes, really—and I'd picked up a bit of a sixth sense for a person drowning. It wasn't like you see in the movies, with the person gurgling and waving their arms around and splashing. You wouldn't really need lifeguards if it was that easy to spot. No, the instinctive drowning response—real lizard brain stuff—is someone vertical in the water, flapping their arms to press down on the surface of the water and leverage their head up. That's what I saw someone doing in the pool, out of the corner of my eye.
"Hey!" I called out to her. "You okay?"
No response, though Camila turned to follow my gaze. I could see the woman in the water was bobbing up and down, not kicking at all, and I was sure it was trouble.
I would like to describe the rescue in detail, but it was all over in a blur. I'd dove into the water, swum through the mild crowd, come to the woman as she slipped under the surface, and the next thing I knew, I was pulling her out onto dry land. I checked to see if she needed CPR, but with her head above water, she was already sputtering and coughing back to a regular breathing pattern. She was a redhead, and a rather cute one, not that it mattered much when she most closely resembled a drowned rat. I held her hair out of her face and rubbed circles in her back, making sure she'd disgorged whatever water she'd taken in. I could hear a smatter of applause around, but it died quick, like a game bird being shot down in a duck hunt.
"You okay?" I asked her, ignoring the gathering crowd.
"Yeah," she said, her voice still a little fraught. She brushed my hand away—slowly, with quite a bit of gratitude I thought—and fixed her hair by running her hands through it. She looked me over. "Thanks, I thought I was done for. I didn't expect such a big... a big..."
"It was nothing," I replied to her wide-eyed stare. It usually take a while for it to hit people that they've almost died.
"No, it's... a lot..." she said, managing to sound vague and certain at the same time. She was looking very fixedly at my face, but every so often her eyes would drift downward.
"Harry! Harry!" Camila hissed quietly from nearby. I turned to look at her, surprised she would be so jealous over me being a good Samaritan—although I supposed that was a good sign—and saw that she was pointing frantically to the pool.
I turned, wondering if some other poor soul was drowning, when I noticed that someone had lose their trunks. An empty pair was floating on the surface of the water. Green, with one of the drawstrings stained blue, just like—
Yeah.
I accepted a towel from Camila. No wonder the crowd'd had no idea what to make of this. I'd managed to turn a rescue into a peepshow.
Maybe I should've tried auditioning for that Baywatch reboot.
